


Hands Are Warm

by Jenwryn



Category: Bleach
Genre: Backstory, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-04-04
Updated: 2009-04-04
Packaged: 2017-10-02 07:07:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jenwryn/pseuds/Jenwryn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The world is fraying at the edges, but Ikkaku's hands are warm. Back-story era.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hands Are Warm

**Author's Note:**

> I love this pairing. So much. My friends can attest. They're probably getting sick of me drooling over Yumichika by now, heheh.
> 
> Unbeta'd.

_Rising like a dark night  
In silence._

~ A Fine Frenzy, 'Last of Days'.

*

The world is blurring at the edges, and fading strangely. Yumichika can feel it slipping from his grasp, even as he closes his lashes to keep out the sight of the darkness creeping in. He ought to be upset, he supposes, but somehow it doesn't really matter half so much as he had thought it would. It had to end one way or another.

And Ikkaku's hands are warm.

This is something that Yumichika has known, in an intellectual kind of way, for quite a while. He's know it since the day they met, in fact. He's known it since the moment some random bald guy had grabbed him by his half-bare hips, and had decided to finish his fight for him. It had been an act of apparent charity which, Yumichika had soon learnt, had really been little more than an excuse to beat someone up; furthermore, regardless of motive, it had been an act of apparent charity which had earnt Ikkaku a black eye for his troubles, courtesy of Yumichika's slender fist. That, and a case of neck ache caused by the double-take Ikkaku had done upon realising that his not-at-all-grateful damsel in distress had turned out to be a he, not a she, and actually not in the least bit distressed in the first place.

Yumichika has never forgotten the feel of those hands upon his hips, though. But somehow they had become travelling companions, and somehow they had become friends, and they have learnt how to watch each other's backs, and how not to fight each other's battles. And Yumichika has trained himself well, trained himself to feel those hands as a _nothing touch_ when they brush against him accidentally, when they hit him during sparring, when they reach towards him, across the space between their blankets, when Ikkaku sleeps. Yumichika has trained himself not to show the effect they have upon him, because there are things in life more important than knowing what those hands - rough, broad, strong - would_ truly_ feel like upon his skin.

Because he needs Ikkaku too much to gamble on it.

Because he's aware that some things cannot be reciprocated.

But Ikkaku's hands are warm, and now Yumichika can feel them, both of them, one placed on either side of his face. They smell like blood and dirt and sweat, and that really isn't beautiful, but Yumichika is having trouble remembering the battle that they'd just fought. Both of them, the pair of them, side-by-side for once, because the Hollow had been impossibly strong, and the Gotei 13 are never there when you need them, only in your way when you don't. The details are already growing fuzzy, though, like the world, like its edges, and Yumichika wonders why Ikkaku is holding him the way he is, so he opens his eyes again, just a little way, because perhaps it's something worth seeing. And perhaps it is, perhaps it isn't; he's having trouble keeping the threads together.

Either way, Ikkaku is gazing down at him as if he were dying or something, and suddenly Yumichika registers a factor other than Ikkaku's warmth, and the pain shoots through him even as he thinks, _oh damn, perhaps that is what I'm doing. _

"Oh," is all he says out loud.

For some reason that makes Ikkaku's face cloud over, and that's no good at all. There's blood on Yumichika's hands, he realises, as he reaches them upwards to try and erase that crease from his companion's face. It is an odd thing, but Ikkaku doesn't even seem to notice; perhaps he's too focussed upon whatever it is that he's doing to try and heal Yumichika's body (his body is frayed at the edges, like his thoughts, like the sky, like the dark night falling inside his mind), and that kind of thing has never been Ikkaku's strong point. Or perhaps he's simply ignoring Yumichika's hands as they shift, dazed, pain-dazed, across Ikkaku's face. Yumichika traces Ikkaku's lips with his shaking, dirty fingertips, to see what they feel like, because he's always wanted to know. He thumbs at them softly, and for a moment Ikkaku's hands seem to still upon him, and Yumichika can feel the man's breath catch against his fingernails, and his lips move as though he's going to say something; Yumichika wants to slide his fingers inwards, but his hands are dirty, so he doesn't. After a moment, Ikkaku breathes again, and then returns to whatever it is that he's doing amongst the blood and the grime. Yumichika thumbs his friend's lips a little more, and wonders where he'll go when he's dead this time, wonders why he never thought to ask someone wise about things like that, and then wonders why he's been so afraid of making a move on Ikkaku, if his friend is going to take up gazing at him like _that. _

Ikkaku's hands have stilled in their feverish work. Now he washes them slowly, in the bowl of warm water beside Yumichika's head, leaning around Yumichika's hold upon him to do so, and says, "You'll live. Just, but you'll live. You're always tougher than you look, eh?"

He keeps on speaking. He's saying something about pain, something about shock. Something about something, but Yumichika can't hear him over the stab of almost-disappointment he's floundering beneath. It hurts more than his wounds do, and isn't that a strange thing? And all he can do is let his hands drop away from his friend's face, and murmur _oh_ again.

Ikkaku looks slightly annoyed. "Che," he grumbles. "Don't sound too pleased at me saving your skinny little arse, or anything."

Some part of his brain, vigilant even through the pain and this preposterous sense of indefinable loss, tells Yumichika that that sounds vaguely like an insult, but he can't focus on anything long enough for it to matter. Instead, he simply half-smiles. He feels as though he's falling asleep, tumbling, sliding, deep below water, and his eyelids flutter closed again. He whispers, "I was going to ask you to kiss me, when I was dying..."

Strange, that the world is no longer frayed, but soft and grey as though it has been consumed completely. Strange, the way he feels as though his hands are too empty.

"Eh, no, don't you _dare_ give up on me now," Ikkaku's voice is saying, from somewhere above the darkness. "Open your eyes, Yumi, I mean it, _look at me_."

Strange, too, how worried he sounds, but Yumichika does as he's asked. There's nothing but twilight, though, and the blood upon Ikkaku's face, and he doesn't even have the energy to work out which one of them it belongs to, let alone tell him to clean it off. He's just so unspeakably tired. He needs sleep. All he wants now, is to sleep. He thinks he's losing track of the world, though, because his skin is telling him that Ikkaku's hands are back upon his face again. They feel warmer than they did before, and the two thumbs are stroking at his cheeks. That seems the strangest thing of all, somehow.

"Such an idiot," Ikkaku mumbles, and his grip tightens.

Yumichika's last, wanderingly-conscious thoughts are that he had better remember this when he wakes, and that Ikkaku's mouth feels even nicer than he had imagined.

He sleeps, and Ikkaku's hands are warm as they hold him.


End file.
